The area offers so many leisure and recreational activities, I’d be here for days if I tried to talk about each one in depth, so I’d like to share with you just a few of my favourite places and things to do in the Central Okanagan.

 Wineries and Orchards

Kelowna and the surrounding area is home to several top notch wineries and there’s no better way to spend an afternoon than a hearty lunch at one of the many fine downtown restaurants, then setting off on a tour of 2 or 3 of the local wineries.  The valley is renown for its icewine…that’s a very sweet dessert wine, made from grapes that have been frozen solid on the vine before harvest.  And a mighty chilly harvest it is!  If you prefer something a little drier, many of the wineries here can be counted upon to produce a nice Gewürztraminer  (my favourite) and some pretty good Chardonnays, among others.  I don’t really like red wine so can’t vouch for them, but I hear Mission Hills makes a kick-ass Merlot.  Whatever’s your pleasure, you can count on finding something you like if you sample enough!  LOL

Kelowna is home to the Orchard Industry Museum, housed in a refurbished packing house.  It’s interesting to see how it was done in days gone by and how much (and how little) has changed.  Our climate is conducive to growing cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, and berries, as well as the most common commercial crop, apples.  Agriculture Canada has a research station just down the valley at Summerland (is that a great name for a town, or what?) where they’ve developed several varieties of apples, the best known being the Spartan.

The train don’t run by here no more…

High along the eastern wall of the valley, there is an abandoned rail bed, the old Kettle Valley Railway. The railway, a spur of the Canadian Pacific Railway, has been inactive for nearly 30 years.  The last ties were taken up in 1980 and it’s been used as a recreational area ever since.  The trail through Myra Canyon includes 2 tunnels and 18 trestles, the longest of which is 220 metres (240 yards) long and 55 metres (180 feet) tall.  By the mid-nineties, the trestles had fallen into disrepair and missing ties on the bridges had become a challenge for those of us with a healthy respect for heights, that is to say, we scaredy-cats.  A local volunteer group took on the project of making the trail more accessible, not to mention safer, putting plank decking and hand rails on the trestles and closing the trail to vehicular traffic.  The Myra Canyon section is now an easy and stress-free four hour hike.  It’s not unusual to see examples of the local fauna on the trail, mostly the small variety, marmots, squirrels and deer are common sights.

Mooving experiences...   

The mountains above the valley are crisscrossed by active logging roads that allow access to the high country lakes that dot the landscape.  The lakes are some of my favourite places, frequented mostly by fishermen chasing trout and those of us who just need a break from the city.  My friends and I have been known to hop in the car, armed only with the notoriously unreliable maps provided by the Forest Service and set off into the wilderness.  More than once we've wondered if we'd end up in another country altogether!  Our talisman on these little excursions has always been the cattle that are allowed to roam free in the wilderness all summer.  We've always figured that if we saw cows, we must be on the right road.  How's that for logic? But it always seems to work out for us!

Click here to see my little guide to the rest of British Columbia.